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If there was ever a good time to get into ICT, it's now.

Beverley Head, Information Age

04/01/2008 03:48:51

Cover story: Hdg to come, intro to come

Beverley Head

Officially there are about 514,000 people employed in information and communication technology (ICT) professions. Unofficially there may be ten times that many according to Philip Argy, president of the Australian Computer Society; "because of the ubiquity of IT - it's embedded everywhere."

There's no argument from Michel Hedley, national ICT workforce manager for the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) that; "Our industry is a general purpose multiplier - it affects every industry." But here's the rub: "The industry relies on people," says Hedley.

And whether it's 514,000 people who work in ICT or 5 million who work with ICT, there just aren't enough of them.

In a booming economy where unemployment generally is running at record lows, skilled people keen to work in ICT are in particular short supply. A report from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations published in October suggests that there are at least 26,700 ICT vacancies in Australia.

The ICT skills vacancy index has risen by 17.5 per cent during the year, indicating that supply is continuing to tighten. And in its most recent release the Olivier recruitment company, which tracks online job advertisements, said that demand for IT&T positions grew a further 2.29 percent in October.

Organisations seeking ICT professionals and not finding them aren't alone in their skills quest; the nation at large is facing a challenge to find appropriately skilled employees in just about every field. In its most recent quarterly business survey NAB found that almost 65 per cent of companies felt that finding staff was limiting their ability to grow.

One particular challenge facing Australia is that the lack of enthusiasm for an ICT career seems to set in early.

A report from the Australian Council of Deans of Science earlier this year found that university enrolments in ICT courses have crashed. While overall university enrolments grew by about 7 per cent in the period 2002 to 2005, ICT enrolments plunged 19 percent during the same period.

According to the president of the ACDS, Professor John Rice; "ICT presents a clear instance of the conflict between national capacity building and a market driven university system.

"Driven to make up shortfalls in government funding, universities have turned to fee paying overseas students. In ICT the proportion of overseas students rose from 45 per cent to 50 percent during 2002-2005. Half of our capability investment in ICT is destined to leave the country unless retained through immigration."

Tackling the decline must be a priority as new graduates are an important source of skills. Other potential sources of talent may involve lateral moves into ICT from other disciplines, or women lured back into the workforce by ICT's promise of flexible work practices, or older skilled workers who are able to be retained and reskilled for longer. Many companies challenged to find skills locally are also accessing international ICT skills by outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring or hiring overseas workers with 457 work visas.

For people who do want to work in ICT the opportunities in the sector have never been more obvious; according to the ACS' annual employment survey ICT unemployment is currently at a five-year low of 3.84 per cent. There has also been a robust, if not spectacular, increase in ICT salaries.

It's important to note however that Australia's ICT skills market is far from homogeneous. There are clear signs that skills demands varies across the states and territories with NSW, Victoria and Queensland worst affected.

The demographics of the workforce are also skewed. In spite of the flexible work possibilities of an ICT career, women remain significantly under-represented in the ICT labour market, and the ACS survey reflects some evidence of ageism with the peak age for unemployment of ICT workers being in the 41-50 year old age group.

Angus Robinson, chief executive of AEEMA (the Australian Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association) says; "There is no doubt we've been really caught short in terms of the access to skilled people."

Strong economic conditions mean that "companies have the capacity to invest in new equipment but they can't get access to skilled people to install it. There has been no mapping of future skills needed", laments Robinson.

AEEMA, which will from January 2008 be integrated with the Australian Industry Group in part to give it greater political clout, believes that there needs to be more strategic thinking regarding national skills building. Says Robinson: "The real shortage we have is the lack of strategic thinking. We live in a nirvana of 'let it rip' - we let the economy advance in areas of natural advantage such as resources but do not look beyond that."

He contrasts that to Singapore where the Government famously determined it wanted to establish a modern economy, performed a study of what it would require and then put in place strategic plans to support and enable that.

In Australia; "no one is even looking at that. There are no goals for long-term wealth creation in this country", according to Robinson.

Certainly beyond some posturing about broadband speeds, in the lead-up to the Federal election none of the main parties got excited about ICT. The Australian Information Industry Association's chief executive, Sheryle Moon, branded both parties as demonstrating a "policy free zone" regarding the ICT sector in spite of its 4.6 per cent contribution to national GDP.

Ian Dennis, chairman of Whitehorse Strategic Group and chairman of the ACS in Victoria, agrees that Australia's ICT skills issue is vexed, needs careful attention, and that it has to date failed to become the sort of political issue that can be leveraged for votes.

He also sees a mismatch between supply and demand not just in quantity but also quality and capability, which needs to be addressed: "You can have a large number of skilled people without the skills that the market wants.

"The university sector develops graduates with unsaleable skills. The match between supply and demand is not purely qualitative it is quantitative also," he says.

Dennis believes part of the problem is that much of the information about Australia's skills crisis is anecdotal and not statistically structural. "There is a lot of evidentiary material, but it is being used selectively," he says.

Dennis confirms also that there is no single, homogeneous ICT marketplace - but a series of very different state- and territory-based skills markets. "That's one of the problems of looking at statistics on a national basis. I don't think we are yet in a position to conduct the debate nationally."

Even if those barriers could be overcome there seems to be a reluctance on the part of government to roll up its sleeves and tackle the problem. According to Dennis: "The ICT Skills Framework is there but the Government is sitting on its hands."

Traditionally ICT has not been seen as a vote winner. The last minister to get really involved in the muck and bullets of ICT was the Hawke government's John Button. (While Senator Alston was an effective telecommunications minister, he was more interested in C than IT.)

Since then ministers have acknowledged the productivity benefits of ICT, but only dabbled in terms of policy.

Dennis believes the lack of deep ICT focus is a mistake on the part of the main political parties given that a bloc of over half a million people is employed in ICT - bigger than the mining workforce, a sector which does have political clout. "Not being unionised has a lot to do with it," he acknowledges.

While a sudden surge toward unionisation seems unlikely for the ICT sector, so at present does a significant dose of strategic thinking according to AEEMA's Robinson: "My view is that there are a lot of band-aid approaches."

In May this year the National ICT Alliance released a 10-year vision for the sector. That statement, which has been well received, but as yet not acted upon, called for "An Australian ICT industry with a leading skills base by world standards with the Australian, State and Territory governments, industry and education providers working collaboratively to improve skills, foresighting skills development and enhance enrolments in ICT courses."

It also hoped "for Australia to become a highly ICT literate and truly technology proficient society".

Prior to the election AEEMA called on both the Coalition and Labor to develop a strategy which would reverse the decline in student enrolments and expand the pool of workers in the sector.

"Australia allocates considerable public sector resources to predicting, analysing and planning for roads, schools, hospitals and other essential infrastructure, but we do not give sufficient attention to predicting and building our equally essential skills capability," it argued.

According to the AIIA's Michel Hedley the situation is acute: "Over the last five years there has been enormous growth in the number of people employed and enormous growth in the number of vacancies." It was telling, he added, to consider also the number of applications which were being received per vacancy. "Sometimes there is less than one application per vacancy."

At present, he says, "there are four or five channels of supply: people moving from education into work, through a promotion or moving into another area, people who are already employed moving into the ICT area, migrants -- and what is now starting to develop, when Australian companies can't get people, instead of offshoring, they are setting up operations to do the work overseas," says Hedley.

Certainly permanent and temporary migration has been a saving grace for many employers and according to Hedley, "skilled migration has tended to favour the ICT professionals for the last few years. There has been some kerfuffle over the 457s but it has worked for us."

Elwin Idserda is a Dutch national who arrived in Australia in September 2006 with a four-year 457 Visa. He's on a two-year placement, working with Logica in Brisbane.

"In Logica there are quite a lot of us on 457 visas," says Idserda who added that it "was quite surprising to see there were so many foreigners in ICT", although he thinks that is positive, and a demonstration of a much more global skills market developing.

"I do see a movement of more people globally. There is no other way around it as there are just not enough people who want to work in ICT."

He says his colleagues also recognise the benefits in being able to learn from one another's internationally honed skills, adding that he's never experienced any resentment from local ICT staff about his coming to work in Australia on a temporary basis.

For Idserda, Australia's skills shortage (and hence his opportunity) and the quality of life in Australia were the twin attractions to make him apply for the 457 visa. "In Holland we have a similar shortage, but not so extreme," he says. He's also paid about the same as he would expect in Holland; "But the spending power is greater in Australia."

While migrants with 457 visas have been used, often by larger enterprises to bridge their skills gaps, it remains very important to attract more locals to the field. And that may require some attitudinal shifts.

Says Michel Hedley: "ICT used to be nerdy and career limiting. We have to work out how to change the perception."

He believes that messages about the positive contribution ICT can make on green issues, and the work/life balance promise of ICT could help attract more people to consider a career in ICT. It was critical he said as; "The economy is booming. A lot of that can be attributed to the contribution of ICT to productivity."

But at the end of the day; "We're a people-based industry." __________________________________________ Government to-do list

• Obtain robust data to enable skills capability mapping to understand current, and predict future, skills needs. • Increase the number of technology based vocational programmes in schools to increase students' interest and capability in understanding, using, applying and designing technology application to the workplace of today and tomorrow. • Provide primary students with opportunities to be mentored by professional engineers and scientists. • Co-ordinate government, community and professional organisations to provide experience based mentor resources for teachers. • Increase support for university and VET students in engineering and technology disciplines to improve retention rates. • Address workplace culture, remuneration and working conditions to encourage retention of technology professionals. • Develop programmes to facilitate skills upgrading in technical professionals. • Encourage technology and engineering professionals to engage in the education system. • Acknowledge that ICT policy should not hinge on a single issue (broadband) and increase the focus on skills development.

(Source: AEEMA/AIIA) ___________________________________________ The "great jobs debate" An event billed "the Great IT Jobs Debate" organised by the ACS Foundation in November brought together a series of industry stakeholders to discuss the skills issue and how it might best be tackled.

Rather than casting the skills shortage as a problem, attendees were encouraged to see the rising demand for ICT skills as an opportunity for people to consider creating, or returning to, a career in IT.

Charles Noble, development executive for global technology services at IBM Australia, said that the boundaries which defined ICT roles were blurring and that "I don't think we communicate well enough the opportunities of this industry".

He outlined a series of flexible work programmes that IBM was implementing to encourage people to consider a career in ICT, or to delay retirement.

His belief that ICT roles were broadening was echoed by Penny Coulter, a director of recruitment firm Taylor Coulter. Where in the 1980s and 1990s, people looking for ICT professionals were really seeking systems programmers, she said that ICT roles had expanded to embrace both that traditional ICT infrastructure provisioning role, and also business process re-engineering, relationship sourcing and change management roles.

The tertiary sector has also cottoned onto the change. Igor Hawryszkiewycz, head of IT and professor of computer systems at the University of Technology, Sydney said: "UTS is working together with industry. We encourage students to study technology but do a sub-major in anything they want, so that they can understand the business problems of their business."

The university has also produced a careers film with Westpac "to show that jobs are more exciting than just programming".

Certainly demonstrating the breadth of an IT career is important according to Xavier Desdoigts, director of technical operations at Animal Logic who believes that "the image of the backroom engineer is damaging to the industry -- we need to shake that".

John Debrincat, chair of the ACS Foundation, believes that there is also much to be learned from the way that small and medium businesses tackle the challenge of finding skills.

"They are the largest employer in the country with the largest contribution to GDP."

Because there was a dearth of IT skills in the broader marketplace, SMEs actually grew their own IT skills in-house he said.

"There are good opportunities if we think laterally. IBM and Microsoft are leaders but we can take our leadership from what businesses in Parramatta have to do to fix this problem every day, by encouraging people to develop IT skills," said Debrincat.

In an allied move, John Ridge, the executive director of the ACS Foundation, announced that the organisation had secured $250,000 worth of scholarships for IT skills advancement courses with 11 universities signed up to become involved in the scholarship scheme during 2008.